admiration treads on the heels of worship.
All that I sung still to her praise did tend;
Still she was first, still she my song did end—
in these lines we find a note of triumphant fidelity rare in Campion’s work. Compared with this, that other song beginning:
Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,
Though thou be black as night,
And she made all of light,
Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow—
seems but the ultimate perfection among valentines. Others of the songs hesitate between compliment and the finer ecstasy. The compliment is certainly of the noblest in the lyric which sets out—
When thou must home to shades of underground,